


Ad Astra

by pickleplum



Series: Owl and Dragon [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Stargazing, Stars, Wingfic, companion to Athene Noctua, winged!Hermann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 21:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1242094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickleplum/pseuds/pickleplum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann has a special talent for stargazing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ad Astra

Hermann bounces in his place between his brother and sister in the back of his parents’ car. He can’t sit still for the excitement. The discomfort of his wings being tied to his back doesn’t matter today and neither does the fact he’s wearing one of Dietrich’s oldest scratchy wool jumpers.

Tonight, for his fifth birthday, he’s going to the stars.

No neighborhood lights, no noisy dogs, just quiet darkness and the stars. The twenty minute drive to the hill west of the abbey takes forever as he drums his heels against the base of seat. His wings tremble against their bindings.

As soon as the car stops, Hermann takes off like a shot, running as fast as his skinny legs can carry him to the center of the field, while his family picks their way cautiously through the darkness.

He skids to a halt and throws his head back and stares at the sky. In this silent place, it is nearly bright as daylight to his eyes.

To him the sky is a thick carpet of lights with barely a gap between them. He sees far more stars than the rest of his family. Thousands more. So many more he can’t begin to count them. There is a whole universe only he can see.

He revels in it, forgetting everything else.

**Author's Note:**

> > Owls are definitely more sensitive to light than cats are. Cats are over 6 times as sensitive to light than humans. However owls are over 100 times more sensitive to light than humans. So, for example, if you were to look at a night sky you might see 6,000 stars but a cat can see over 40,000 stars and an owl can see over 1 million stars. Cats and owls are a lot more sensitive than us to low light so they can see stars that are fainter. (From <http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1264>)
> 
> To see roughly the difference between normal human vision and owl vision when it comes to stars, check out [these images I generated with star map software](http://pickle-plum.tumblr.com/post/77726554170/in-my-quest-to-research-everything-i-write-i-was). They show the sky over Garmisch-Partenkirchen in summer. Now, Hermann’s vision isn’t quite owl-quality, but is much, much better than human.
> 
> The ‘abbey’ mentioned is the [Benediktinerabtei Ettal](http://abtei.kloster-ettal.de/willkommen/), which is about 15km north of the city.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Stargazer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7332310) by [pickleplum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickleplum/pseuds/pickleplum)




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